Fishermen and recreational boaters who navigate in and out of Lake Tashmoo are understandably exasperated with the town of Tisbury as the summer season is getting underway.

At a selectmen’s meeting this week, Tisbury’s harbor master carefully recounted all the reasons why the town was unable to dredge the entrance channel to the harbor during the off season. The channel is now so choked with sand that the water is only three and a half feet deep at mean low tide, limiting boats with deep drafts to higher tides.

The problem can be traced back at least two years when dredging permits were allowed to expire. Harbor master John Crocker was just taking over the job at the time. It took eighteen months, but Mr. Crocker eventually renewed the permits, barely in time to dredge before an end-of-January deadline this year. Then bids came in over budget and the dredging project was put on hold.

In April, Tisbury town meeting voters approved a hundred thousand dollars in additional funds for dredging, but the town had already decided to postpone the project until the fall.

But in the same way football fans have only so much patience for why their team was beaten, commercial fishermen and recreational boaters whose plans are about to be disrupted want solutions, not excuses.

Given the Island’s attraction as a destination for boaters and Tisbury’s reputation as its maritime capital, the situation is embarrassing at best, perilous at worst.

It’s especially ironic considering the recent completion of a project to rebuild the Lake Street landing, which includes a public pier and boat launch in Tashmoo. The project was made possible by a six hundred and eighty thousand-dollar state grant from the Massachusetts Seaport Economic Council, an agency that helps commonwealth communities restore infrastructure that is considered critical to the maritime economy.

Mr. Crocker has mounted a last-ditch effort to commission the Edgartown dredge to clear the channel just enough to get through the summer. Even he admits that it amounts to a hail Mary pass, considering the many logistical obstacles that include environmental constraints (nesting plovers and horseshoe crab spawning) and the fact that the Edgartown dredge is not even in the water at this time of year.

It should go without saying that a town so heavily reliant on its waterfront should never have allowed its dredge permits to expire to begin with. One excellent step now would to be for the town to explore purchase of its own dredge, perhaps in cooperation with Oak Bluffs, so that with permits in hand the work could proceed quickly.